US orders for goods made to last several years advanced 5.9 percent last month, the US Commerce Department said on Friday. Economists in a Bloomberg survey had expected a gain of 1 percent. Purchases of new homes increased 2.8 percent to an annual pace of 870,000, exceeding the highest estimate in a Bloomberg survey. The US is Taiwan's largest export market after China.

Investors should be "underweight" in Taiwanese equities, or hold less of the nation's shares than their representation on regional stock benchmarks, Bernard Liu, Raymond Hung and Adrian Mowat wrote in a note to clients dated yesterday. The strategists left their forecast for the TAIEX index unchanged at 9,000.

"Looking ahead, we expect Taiwan to underperform Asia ex Japan," the strategists wrote in the report.